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Deer gun
|barrel= |weight= |justweight= |width= |height= |magazine=Single shot |cycle= |minrange= |effective= |range= |alt= |usedby= |velocity= }}"Deer gun" is the name used to refer to an undesignated single-shot assassination pistol designed by Russell J. Moure in 1962 and produced by the American Machine and Foundry Company from 1962 to 1963 in very limited quantities. Essentially a successor to the FP-45 Liberator, the pistol was intended to be given to South Vietnamese guerrillas to aid in their fight against the North Vietnamese. History This unnamed pistol was designed in 1962 by a man named Russell J. Moure,Truby, J. David, Zips, Pipes, And Pens: Arsenal Of Improvised Weapons, 1993 who was the chief designer of the special firearms division of the American Machine and Foundry Company. The weapons were produced from 1962 to 1963, with an initial batch of 1,000 produced; each pistol cost USD 3.95 to produce (USD 32 in 2018 dollars).https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/54/3724/unknown-single-shot-pistol-9-mm-parabellum By 1964, the pistol was listed in the Central Intelligence Agency's special weapons inventory and carried the stock number of 139-H00-9108. After the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy, the United States congress passed a law that ordered any and all clandestine weapons to be destroyed; as such, many of these pistols were destroyed, with those that remain becoming prized collector pieces. The pistols were intended to be airdropped into South Vietnamese territory, with the pistols being given to South Vietnamese guerrillas to aid in their fight against the communist North Vietnamese combatants; the escalation in the scale of the conflict between both parties eventually became so great so that the effectiveness of these pistols against the North Vietnamese became rather questionable.Hogg, Ian V., Walter, John, Pistols of the World, 2004 If the war was to have never escalated, the pistols would have been used in a similar fashion to the FP-45 Liberator; sneak up and incapacitate enemy combatants, retrieve their weapons if the opportunity presented itself and then flee. Some 150 were reportedly sent to Southeast Asia for testing, although no records are known of these pistols being used in actual warfare situations; despite this, an American military officer claims he accompanied a number of American and Vietnamese special forces armed with these pistols for "active evaluation". Design Details A single-shot pistol of extremely crude design, the pistols are made of a single piece of cast aluminum. The pistol has a raised grip area with cross-hatch stippling and a dark blue steel barrel. Extra ammunition could be stored in a grip, with the store accessed by sliding a plate. As the pistol was meant to be airdropped into enemy territory, the pistols were packaged in styrofoam boxes with an additional barrel (one rifled, one smoothbore), three rounds of 9×19mm Parabellum ammunition and a sheet of instructions detailing how to use the weapon. To use the weapon, the barrel was unscrewed and a round inserted into the rear of the barrel, at which point the weapon was cocked using a cocking piece on the rear of the weapon and a small clip placed on the cocking piece to prevent any accidental discharge. After the clip is placed, the barrel can be screwed back on, the clip removed from the cocking piece and placed on the barrel to act as a rudimentary front sight and the weapon can be fired by pulling the trigger. No markings were present on the pistols, with all parts used to manufacture the pistols sourced from outside the United States; this was an attempt by the Central Intelligence Agency to hide the weapon's origin. Ammunition The pistols used 9×19mm Parabellum ammunition. Gallery Deergunbox.png|How the pistols were packaged. Trivia *How the pistol got the name of "deer gun" is unknown; this is suspected to be an Agency code name with "sardonic reference to a survival weapon". *One of Moure's colleagues referred to the pistol as "basically a crude, ugly, but damn decent four dollar zip gun for our Third World allies to use to kill bad guy soldiers." after it was manufactured. References Category:Pistols